This invention relates generally to multiple rotary type memory arrangements including magnetic and optical disk types and more particularly to arrangements of such devices for processing voxel or gridded type data.
In applications such as computer generated imagery (CGI) systems dynamic random access memories are sometimes utilized to store an active data base used for immediate processing and the active data base is updated as required by high speed data transfer from a much larger data base which includes the entire imaging area of interest (gaming area). In such systems which are based on a voxel or gridded type data structure the data is organized in accordance with a two dimensional grid representative of ground coordinates with each grid location having associated therewith data base description elements (voxels), which data, e.g., elevation, color and/or intensity is processed by the GCI system to provide imaging data.
Generally, disk type memory devices including magnetic and optical disk types are substantially less expensive than equivalent capacity solid state random access memories; and voxel based CGI systems, for example, are for some applications potentially memory intense. However, due to inherent data retrieval access times for disk memories, e.g., the device's rotational time, seek time and data transfer rate, a single disk type memory may not be suitable for some CGI applications. Hence, an efficient arrangement for accessing a plurality of disk memory devices in parallel would be a useful contribution to the art.
A primary object of the subject invention is to provide an arrangement of multiple rotary memory devices which is a cost effective implementation for large data bases of voxel or gridded type data.
Another object is to efficiently implement multiple parallel accessed rotary type memory devices used for updating processor memories in applications such as CGI systems which has a data structure based on gridded or voxel type data.
A further object is to provide a disk based voxel data management arrangement which is more cost effective for certain CGI system applications than memories implemented by means of all random access memories (RAM).